In my local paper, Newsday, they have a peice on cheap fixes aka Fuel additives (which the scarfed from the LA Times).

http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/yourwheels/la-hy-wheels3may03,0,6121637.story?coll=la-class-highway1-yourwheels

Basically in the last few years a number of gas stations and refiners have been sued for pumping high sulfur gas. The high sulfur gas contaminates the silver ro silver paladium strip in the fuel sensors (in the tank) and cause "erratic" (read broken" fuel readings at the gauge. The peice goes on to say tens of thousands of cars have been damaged by this.

Hrmmmmm

They als state that Chevron has a additive sold in sotres called "techron Concentrate Plus" which is designed to clean the sensors and save "consumers potentially 500-1000$ in repairs". i will try this the next time i fill up, cant hurt, aside from the 10.00 they say it goes for.

Just wanted to pass on the info.

 

nipper

Nice find nipper!

Also, if you're ever in the fuel tank (you know ,just messing around), take out the fuel pump, and you'll know which part is the fuel bobber, on the end of the bobber (the fuel pump end) there is a contact that gets all this just built up on it (as nipper stated), if you use your fingernail, or something soft you can get all the junk off the contacts, and the sensor will.. seem to work better (at least form my experience)

I did this in the parking lot of a junkyard in mid-state NY waiting to see if they had a fuel pump that would fit... they didn't :-\

I've got a brother that works with the DOE in New Orleans, and yes, a few years ago I think it was Shell that turned out some "high sulphur content" gasoline that immediately killed thousands of fuel gauge senders. He managed to miss out, but said the local BMW dealer was absolutely swamped with cars that they were going to fix due to the fuel.